


Every Breaking Wave

by tielan



Series: The Time Traveller's Husband [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, F/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 06:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6970660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She's thirty-five when she realises he's never seen her as an old woman.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every Breaking Wave

**Author's Note:**

> A tumblr anon gave me the pairing "Captain Hill" and the prompt "mourn" - _Send me a "Mourn" and I'll write a drabble about one character mourning the death of the other_.
> 
> A chapter in the series 'The Time Traveller's Husband'.

_Every sailor knows that the sea_  
_Is a friend made enemy,_  
_And every shipwrecked soul knows what it is_  
_To live without intimacy._

U2 - _Every Breaking Wave_

 

The travel-jump reforms the kitchen sink into the stone curve of a fountain edge under her hand, the tiled kitchen space into a garden full of roses, the chill a wintry day to the warmth of a summer afternoon.

A woman’s gasp turns her head.

“Maria?” Pepper is staring at her, her cheeks white, but it’s the boy beside her who garners all Maria’s attention.

_Aiden_ .

Now she knows what to look for – the blue eyes he inherited from her, with Steve’s uncompromising mouth and the hint of the jaw she saw in the man who once pulled her child self out of the way of an accident, saving both her and his own future.

_Everything special about him comes from you._

“Mommy!”

He’s not that man yet. Her arms are open, then full of a child clinging to her like he hasn’t seen her in months—

Pepper’s talking into her phone, “ _She’s here. Maria’s here—Steve—_ “

But Aiden is sobbing into her shoulder, and although she has little experience yet of the mumbled string of words through tears, she makes out the words _missed you_ and _come back_. And her legs give out, collapsing her down to the cold stone, her back against the fountain rim, her world shaken.

Someone’s sprinting into the garden – footsteps swift and sure that curve around the fountain. She looks up at the familiar shape of him, at the unfamiliar lines grooved around his mouth, around his eyes – naked grief, awful pain – and then he’s on his knees beside her, his hand trembling as it reaches for her cheek.

“Hey,” she manages.

“Maria...” His hand comes around her nape pressing his cheek against hers with the familiar dip of his head, like he’s smelling her skin. “Oh, God, Maria, I didn’t know if I’d ever see you again—”

She frees one hand from her son’s grip and cups the back of Steve’s neck, a caress that usually soothes him. But the muscles under her fingers tense and his shoulders heave. Her brain is numb as she looks up in time to see Tony slipping his hand into Pepper's. “How long?”

“Nine months,” says Pepper. “We don’t know what happened—”

“Although it’s probably best that you don’t—Foreknowledge and all that—”

“Stark.” Steve growls the syllable into her throat. “Go away.”

Pepper tugs at Tony’s hand, but pauses to look back. “We missed you, Maria.”

She looks down at the dark hair of her son and wonders when it turned from downy gold like Steve’s – does she live to see it? And his father—

“When?”

“August 2026.” He pulls back, looks into her face. “You jumped somewhere and came back bleeding. Gun-shot wounds, multiple—Your body was a mess of them—” His hand presses against her stomach, tracing an injury she doesn’t yet have. “You couldn’t tell us what happened, just bled out in my arms.”

“Nine years,” she murmurs, looking down at Aiden who’s brushing away his tears with a defiance that’s more her than Steve. 

“You’re coming back, aren’t you?” His expression has the desperate hopefulness of a child, even as Steve’s carries the bitter understanding of an adult. Death is not final for her – not for them, when she might appear to him at any moment in his lifetime – however long that is. She’s seen him as a young boy, sick and frail, and as an old man, withered and pale, and her life is bound by his and will continue to be, apparently, even past her death. “Mommy?”

“I can’t,” she says, her voice breaking as she pushes back the too-long forelock from his face. “I’m sorry, baby. I can’t, it doesn’t work like that—” She bends and kisses him. “You have to be strong. I’ll come back sometimes – when I can.” When the jumps throw her into his life – or him into hers – but she won’t always be his mother, like now. She looks up at Steve. “You have to keep going.”

“I did. We are.” His hand gropes for hers, grips it too tightly, eases back. “And you didn’t visit for so long— But you have. You will. Now I know, the waiting won’t be so hard.”

“Oh, God, Steve, _no_.” Horror is a black, crawling beast in her heart at the thought. He lives a _long_ time – she’s seen him old and grey! “You can’t live like that – waiting forever for me to show up in your timeline.”

“Why not? I did it for nearly thirty years before we met.”

Her gaze is blurring, she closes her eyes against the tears, trying to will them away. It’s the post-partum blues, she tells herself. Her body gave birth to her son only four months ago and she’s still learning to cope with the reality of being a mother – but this? How is she supposed to cope with the knowledge that she won’t see her son become a man?

“Don’t,” is all she can say when she opens her eyes. “Please don’t.”

“Make every moment count,” he says. “You said that after Aiden was born. I guess it must have been after this jump. And we _did_.”

But Maria knows him well enough to see the regret that twitches across his expression. He was always a terrible liar. “Steve?”

“No.” He says, that beautifully mutinous expression on his face that says she’s not going to get anywhere. “I’ve lived it once already, I won’t relive it again.”

He rises to his feet, tapping Aiden on the shoulder. “Come on, champ. We only have a...little time with mom before she has to go back. Let’s give her something happy to remember, okay?”

Aiden dashes his tears from his cheeks and puts on a brave face, but his hand clings to hers with every step Maria takes, as though afraid to let go for fear she’ll vanish. And Steve? Steve watches her with the hunger of a man who knows this is a temporary respite at best. 

It’s they who need the happy memory, so much more than she does.

When she gasps with the forces that pull her through time and space. She touches Aiden’s cheek. “I have to go, Aiden.”

“Mommy!”

“I love you, okay? Remember?”

“I remember.” His eyes fill with tears and he clings to her so tightly before he lets her go and as she stands and looks at Steve.

“Every moment,” he says. “Remember?”

“Don’t wait for me.”

“I can’t not—” His hand presses against her cheek, and his mouth just brushes hers—

And then there’s nothing against her mouth, the kitchen sink under her hand, and the lingering bitterness of their grief in the air.

 


End file.
